For this week's tip, I am delighted to welcome GB Williams. 
GB Specialises in fast paced, contemporary crime that doesn’t hide from harsh reality (not too much gore). She says "Nor do I hide from the fact that people have a heart, I will run through the gamut of emotion, and sometimes make the reader cry. There are many elements in my work, but it’s all about people and what they go through." 

GB's Writing Tip
Read out loud. 
When you think you’re ready to go, think again and read your work aloud. It doesn’t matter what genre you’re writing, or where you are on your publishing journey, to know if your manuscript works or not, the best way is to read it out loud.
This is a struggle for most authors, but stick with it. No one expects you to go all Shakespearean, enunciating each syllable and clipping every vowel, but it is important to know that the words sound right when read out. Reading aloud will highlight a lot of issues you would otherwise not know were there, and the various grammar checkers won’t tell you either. 
The inability to listen to your own voice doesn’t exclude you doing this either. There are many programmes which will read your work out for you. They are utterly expressionless, but I find that means I don’t get caught up in the story, I listen to the actual words and mistakes jump out. The latest versions of Word have a read to me option, as does the free download of Adobe, not sure about Pages as I don’t have a Mac, but I suspect that something is available for Mac users too.
Reading aloud also has another benefit, it lets you know what is easy/difficult to actually say.  There’s a surprising difference between what we can read in our heads and what we can read aloud. The added benefit of course, is that should your book got to audio, you’ve made life easier for the actor reading it.

GB specialises in complex, fast-paced crime novels, most recently, “The Chair”, but also the “Locked Trilogy”.  GB was shortlisted for the 2014 CWA Margery Allingham Short Story Competition with the story Last Shakes, now available in Last Cut Casebook. Crime novels are her stock in trade, but she has had success with short stories in other genres including steampunk, horror, and erotica, and has penned a successful steampunk series. She has a husband and two grown up children, not to mention the worlds most imperious demanding cat. GB is such a cat slave, even the neighbourhood cats come demanding dinner. Now working as a fulltime writer and freelance structural editor. GB hates every photo ever taken of her.
She is published by Black Bee Books.

To learn more about her and her writing, visit her website or her Facebook page.
Or you can follow her on Twitter @GailBWilliams or Instagram @gbwilliamsauthor.

This week I am delighted to welcome Fiona Veitch Smith. Fiona is the author of the Poppy Denby Investigates novels, Golden Age-style murder mysteries set in the 1920s. The Jazz Files was shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger (2016), while subsequent books were shortlisted for the Foreword Review Mystery Novel of the Year and the People’s Book Prize. She worked as a journalist on Cape Town newspapers in the 1990s before returning to the UK to work on regional magazines in NE England. Thereafter, she spent a decade lecturing creative writing at Northumbria University and journalism at Newcastle University. She is now the Assistant Secretary of the Crime Writers’ Association. She lives in Newcastle upon Tyne with her husband and teenage daughter.
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Fiona's #TuesdayTip.
Find your OWN writing rhythm. You will hear writing gurus (many of them famous authors) telling you that you must write every day to be a ‘real’ writer. That you must set yourself a word count. That you must carry on writing and not go back over what you’ve written before you reach the end of your novel. Well, I do none of those things. Due to caring duties and other work commitments, I only write three days a week, for only a few hours at a time. I rarely set myself a word count. I always go back over what I have written before I move on. And yet I have managed to write a novel a year for the last 10 years as well as a couple of dozen children’s picture books and hundreds of magazine and blog articles. If the ‘write every day, never go back over what you have written, and set yourself a word count’ style works for you then stick to it, but if it doesn’t, don’t be scared to work to your own rhythm. The important thing is that you write. Your way and in your time. And that it brings you, and hopefully others, some joy. Happy writing.
​(c) 2021 Fiona Veitch Smith

The Poppy Denby Investigates novels are Golden Age murder mysteries set in the 1920s dealing with issues of social justice while sizzling with jazz-age style. Poppy, dubbed the 1920’s most stylish sleuth, works on a London tabloid and solves murders on the side.
The first in the series is The Jazz Files and is available on Amazon.
The latest, The Crystal Crypt​ has just been released and is available here:
To find out more about Fiona and Poppy Denby, you can visit her website www.poppydenby.com and Facebook page or follow her on Twitter @FionaVeitchSmit and Instagram @fionaveitchsmith_author.

For this week's gues blog post, I am very excited to introduce Candy Denman. Candy is not only a novelist, but has also written TV scripts and therefore has a special insight into characterisation.
Candy writes a series of crime novels about forensic physician and part-time GP, Dr Callie Hughes. The first in the series is Dead Pretty​ and can be bought from Amazon. 
It is not unusual for Callie to see a dead body, but this time, the young woman’s corpse rings alarm bells. Her medical knowledge gives her unique insight into the killer, but convincing the police is a challenge. 

Candy's Writing Tip
When writing both scripts and novels, getting the ‘voice’ of a character is critical. Just as the reader/viewer has to believe in the story, it is just as important that they believe in the characters and what they are saying or how they are acting. Once the reader loses that suspension of disbelief, they lose interest in the story.
So how can a writer make sure they get the voice right and that they make the different characters sound sufficiently different? This isn’t about just giving them different accents, it’s more about making them distinct from each other.
When I write the back story and character traits for each character, I find it helpful to do it in the first person, so that each character describes themselves to me and give me their own potted history.
It might sound bonkers, but it works.
I’m a young lad, not bad, but I don’t take any shit, know what I mean? I didn’t mean to do it, it just sort of happened.
I’m not complaining, not really. I haven’t had an easy life, but nothing is as hard as this being on your own.  Sometimes I might not see anyone for weeks in a row and I find myself talking to my cat, what was her name? Tiddles. That’s right.  My long gone, dead cat Tiddles.
I do about half a page on each, depending on how big a character they are in the story and save them for reference. This is particularly important if you are writing a series, to make sure you get them right each time. A character can develop and change in time, depending on what has happened to them, but their overall voice will remain the same.
(c) 2021 Candy Denman

Candy trained as a nurse, and worked in the NHS almost all her life, until managing recently to disengage herself in order to become a full-time crime writer. She has also written a large number of scripts for such highly-acclaimed TV series as The Bill and Heartbeat which gave her the idea to write a crime series that also includes medical stories.
You can learn more about Candy by visiting her website www.candydenman.co.uk​ or Facebook Page and by following her on Twitter @CrimeCandy or Instagram @CandyDenman.

Welcome to this week's #TuesdayTip. 
Today, I am delighted to welcome Laraine Stephens as a guest blogger.
I am a writer of contemporary police procedurals, so I am especially excited to feature a writer of historical crime fiction.
Laraine lives in Beaumaris, a bayside suburb of Melbourne, Australia. After a career as a teacher-librarian and Head of Library, she decided to turn her hand to the craft of crime writing. She is a member of Writers Victoria, Sisters in Crime (Australia), the Australian Crime Writers’ Association and the Crime Writers’ Association of the UK.
Laraine’s debut novel, The Death Mask Murders, is the first in the Reggie da Costa Mysteries series. It was published by Level Best Books in June 2021. Her second book, A Dose of Death, is due out in May 2022.
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Laraine's #TuesdayTip
CREATING AN HISTORICAL SETTING
If you are writing an historical novel, it is important to create an authentic and accurate depiction of the period you have chosen. A writer should evoke a sense of a particular time and place, weaving information seamlessly into the narrative and dialogue. 
In researching The Death Mask Murders, set in Melbourne in 1918, I used digitised newspapers from the time, which were available through the National Library of Australia’s archive, Trove (free). In the United Kingdom, there is, for example, the British Newspaper Archive (pay) and in the United States, the Newspaper Archive (pay). 
From these sources, you can gain a wealth of information on the social, political and economic circumstances of the time, including specific events. Another advantage of using digitised newspapers is discovering whether a word or expression was in common use at the time. For example, when was ‘meal ticket’, ‘serial killer’, ‘dodge a bullet’, ‘tuxedo’ or ‘boyfriend’ (in the romantic sense) first used? Advertisements and even the Classifieds will provide information on subjects as diverse as stage shows, entertainment, cars, prices, product brands and clothing. Without this resource, Reggie da Costa, The Argus’s senior crime reporter, in The Death Mask Murders, would never have worn his impeccably cut linen suit, high-collared cream shirt, and green striped tie from Wallace, Buck and Goodes of Queens Walk. Nor would he have driven a 1917 Dodge Roadster, a flashy, two-seater automobile with a wooden steering wheel, black paintwork, and shiny large headlamps, which was his pride and joy. 
I finish with a word of warning. When it comes to writing, historical background and detail should never overwhelm the plot. Our readers buy novels with the expectation that they will enjoy a cracking, good story, rather than drowning in a reservoir of information.
(c) Laraine Stephens 2021.
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Laraine Stephens is a writer of historical crime fiction. Her novels are set in Melbourne, Australia in the early years of the twentieth century. Her debut novel, The Death Mask Murders, is available from Amazon
You can learn more about Laraine by visiting her Website or Facebook Page.